Layout

The Gigabyte GA-7PESH1 comes on a blue PCB and black expansion slots. Even if it is a workstation motherboard, Gigabyte seems to have spent some time on the design and didn't make a cheap looking motherboard but indeed a very good looking one. The layout itself has been well thought and there is for example plenty of space around the CPU socket to install even todays largest CPU coolers as we managed to mount two Noctua NH-D14 on it without any problems.

Gigabyte equipped his workstation motherboard so each cpu are powered by six digital power phases. Furthermore each set of four DIMM memory slots benefit of their own two digital power phases. With a total of 4x 2 digital power phases for the memory and 2x 6 for the processors to provide maximum stability.

Totally you'll find four sets of four DIMM-slots on the GA-7PESH1 which means there are no less than sixteen memory slots for an amount of total memory up to 512GB. Officially supported are the following clock speeds: 1600 / 1333 / 1066 MHz. Memory slots are quite close to the cpu socket so you won't be able to fit enthusiasts memory on it but that's not a problem because this motherboard is designed for workstation use and worksation memory doesn't have high memory heatspreaders luckily.

Southbridge as well as current converters are being held at adequate temperatures via a passive cooling blocks. But not only, also the LSI chip and the LAN chip have heatsinks on them to feel more fresh.